robby
Photon Vampire
- Joined
- May 1, 2021
- Messages
- 4,136
Unfortunately I read the first few pages of the thread and then skipped to the end and missed @RickyBobby above post. I have been an EE designer for 35 years and I know exactly what he is talking about. As we all know, most companies including Apple make their products in China. What some people do not know is that whether you want to license away your IP to China because of generosity or not, in most cases China will require access to the IP if you want to do business over there, it all depends on what kind of leverage you have to prevent this demand.Let me clear up a few misconceptions. Sol-Ark is owned by US Veterans, not Deye. The engineers at Sol-Ark designed the Hybrid-Inverters and Deye is a manufacturer of our innovations. We worked with them for 7 years and gave them much of the IP to assist in the development of their grid-tied and microinverter options. 99% of the features, software methods, GUI, and hardware was done by us in the US.
So why would we give away IP? Our mission is affordable energy independence for family homes and businesses. We allowed Deye to sell elsewhere, in accordance to our agreement, so it could lower the costs for everyone and we pass that on.
Our Veteran owners and engineers fought around the world for the love and respect of the US people. Our focus is here now.
Why is there a higher price for Sol-Ark? #1) We paid millions in development, prototypes, debug, and cleaning up manufacturing mistakes. #2) We spent 100's of thousands in UL certificates and engineering time. #3) We warranty and repair our systems. #4) We pay a 25% tariff on these inverters. Others you mention in this blog are falsifying the country of origin to only pay 1.5%. #5) Features and functions of Sol-Ark products are significantly different for the US market and we continuously improve. #6) We designed it for ourselves and DIYers and found this requires a tremendous amount of support. Our rapidly growing engineering team is committed to their success.
Thanks for letting us know about these Stole-Arks. What good is a $30-50K ESS system that fails?
Remember our mission of affordability. We realized long ago that reducing the cost of the inverter was not the complete answer. Below are the largest expenses of an average installed (not DIY) ESS system = $45K before credits.
1. Battery = $13,000
20kWh x $650/kWh
2. Install = $10,000
10kWpv x $1/W
3. Financing = $7,000
$38K x 18%
4. Inverter = $6,000
8000W x $0.75/W
5. PV Panels = $5,000
10,000W x $0.50/W
6. Misc / BOM = $4,000
Each ESS (Batt + Inverter) = $19K. If we can use a single ESS to backup the entire home instead of 2+, that’s a massive savings. If we can make it 2-3X easier to install, we can bring down that expense. If we can make the battery last longer, that saves. We are currently engineering communications for Utilities that allows for “renting” your ESS ~60 times a year and pay you ~$1K/5KWh/year!
You will see some amazing innovations from Sol-Ark in 2021. Most of these will be Made in the USA as our new facility will be completed.
The Deye/Sunsynk Hybrid is a copy of a Sol-Ark, not the other way around.
Respectfully,
Tom Brennan
Sol-Ark CTO
Soli Deo Gloria
As I stated in my above post, there is a world of difference between the Sol-Ark Inverter and the Knock offs.
To Address a second point I see mentioned about SMA and the high quality of their products. I agree!
They make really good stuff but the problems come in when you want to design a proper Hybrid system around it.
Right now I have a Sunny Boy 6Kw new in the box but I had to abandon the idea of building a system around it because of all the extra equipment that was needed to make a true flexible storage system. The final straw was when it was confirmed to me that the Sunny Island could not do 115V 50Hz voltage which is what I needed. I would instead have to use all European 230V equipment and one or possibly two Autotransformers. I could never get a straight answer on that.
Believe me I spent six weeks going back and forth with SMA America and in the end I educated their sales people on the limitations of what their products could do. They just assumed that they could do what I needed but when I insisted that the documentation was conflicted they contacted Germany and were told that the US equipment could not work for my needs, that I needed EU equipment.
My number one requirement was that during a Daytime power outage the PV system would still work and charge the batteries and power the house. I knew an Auto transfer switch was needed to cut off the grid and prevent feedback but I had no idea how complicated and expensive this was going to be with SMA equipment. I had drawn up a simple design that IMHO would have worked but SMA informed me that they would not honor any warranties if I used that design. They instead said I needed to use their approved design for creating a MicroGrid and having the PV system up and running during a power outage.
This is what I got. Now for my application two of the Sunny Islands would be removed but two Autotransformers would be needed, one for the SI and one for the SB.
That Grey Box in the middle is this unit.
The Enwitec Autotransfer switch along with all it.s breakers and other grounding stuff added another $1200 to the project and Autotransformers another $1200. I was getting Quotations for nearly $11,000 for just this equipment, not including batteries, PV panels or installation. One big concern was that this whole thing was just getting to complicated and had to many parts.
Then I found Sol-Ark and that was life saver! Just the attitude of the company alone was so refreshing. They knew what their product could do and it did exactly what you would want a Hybrid system to do when you have a long multi day duration Grid failure. There was no warranty threats, just help and assistance.